…flights of fancy…

Archive for the ‘Australia’ Category

C’s passport and visa arrived today! Yay! It’s such a relief. I really thought I was going to end up flying to Hong Kong alone. That would have been so sad for both of us.

When the front door knocked I was so excited I bounded out of bed to open it. No time for dressing I opened it in only my pants (under) and a t-shirt. I must have looked quite ridiculous. The courier was trying to hold back a smirk.

So a few weeks ago I really got into reading a blog called ‘Alien Spouse’. I think I found a link to it on amnesty’s website. It’s written by an English lass who moved to America after marrying an American. It’s a great blog. So many pretties.

Anywho the writer of the blog, the ‘alien spouse’, was running a competition to guess the amigurumi she was making. She posted little clues, starting with the wool and ending in snippets of the finished amigurumi. Whoever guessed the identity won the amigurumi. And I won! Huzah! I was very much chuffed – I so rarely win things. And I’d been musing muchly on what it could be. I made a few guesses. And then ah the satisfaction, I correctly guessed she was the alien spouse herself woo!

Today she arrived!

(Note: If this post makes little sense I apologise. I have a bit of a fever)

I’ve had a big pause from writing on here mainly because of all the crazy organising things that needs to be done before moving countries. Sigh. Much to do, only 3 days (wait, really only 2 whole days, eek) to do it in.

Unhelpfully my body has decided now is the perfect time to get sick. So I’m trying to finish my TEFL course right now whilst dizzy and feverish. Joy.

Anywho… on Saturday we had our going away party. Which had the fabulous theme of MILK! Oh yes. N and I somehow reached the conclusion that a milk party was the best idea ever. I think it started just by us concluding a party with lots of cheese would be brilliant. Which it was.

Now I know people had their doubts but I think it all worked rather well. We had milk fancy dress (mainly just white clothes, although one guy came as the milky wayand a lass came as a cow), cheese, and a variety of milk based alcoholic cocktails. That last one sounds gross but I worked out some pretty nice ones (main ingrediants being baileys, Kahlua, vodka).

I had great fun inventing the shot to the right here.

It was milk, kahlua and irish butterscotch cream. I layered the cream and then sprinkled chocolate powder on top. I was pretty pleased with it. Ah my months of bartending pay off.

I even made a series of milk-friendly posters to decorate the main room with!

This is part of C and I’s attempts to assimiliate all things Chinese before we head off on our trip.

I once had a Chinese housemate and I remembered her vaguely boiling eggs in tea and soy sauce to make a special egg usually eaten at Chinese New Year. Cracked tea eggs. Or similar. Ah ha I thought, I have eggs lying around somewhere, lets do the same.

I’d just also had some rather bad news from home, so I may have been distracting myself to a certain extent.

This is different to the famous 100 year eggs, which aren’t as old as their name, more like a few months old. Still sounds gross but I think I’d like to try them anyway. It’s on my list. My china list.

Anywho, back to todays eggs….

I added some eggs to water with green tea leaves (I had no black) and soy sauce and boiled them for ages. I kept getting distracted and accidently letting them boil dry. So I’d top up the water. After a while I began to wonder how they got the cracked pattern. So I looked it up on google and found this great website. It recommended putting cinnamon and anise and sugar in with the tea and soy sauce. And also actually cracking the shell of the eggs. Duh. So I did that and let them simmer for 40 mins and then I covered the pot and let them soak for about 6 hours.

You know when you’re on a bus and some crazy person gets on? And you worry they’ll sit next to you? Well there’s a guarantee that if I’m also on the bus you need not worry because the crazy person will sit next to me. I’m a crazy magnet. Mostly I don’t mind because I’ve had some very interesting conversations. Today though my daily crazy person was far too adamant that I was pregnant. I’m NOT pregnant and it was getting a bit much trying to explain this.

I had to go and sort out the travel insurance so I got a bus to Lygon Street. And a man sat next to me. A man with a massive beard! He asked me when I was due. Which was pretty confusing. I thought he meant when I was getting off the bus. So I told him. Then it was his turn to be confused. Then he tried to touch my belly! Urgh! Even if I WAS pregnant I would object to being randomly touched. Why do people think they’re allowed to do this?

This is the top I was wearing today. I’m now worried that it does make me look pregnant! I would be tempted to use it to get seats on buses if it did though. As far as I can tell that’s one of the few positive things about being pregnant (or a nun, or old).

Anyway back to the guy – he would not accept me telling him the truth. He argued with me! As though I’d just forgotten I was gestating a person inside me.

I thought a neighbour was drilling. After waiting 2o minutes I angrily launched myself outside to ‘give them a piece of my mind’ only to find a crew of construction workers sawing up the train tracks!

I can’t believe how much noise they’re making! Yargh!

Anyway I thought I’d film them for no other reason than to share with you all the noise! And then I got a ‘bit’ carried away with a video editing program I didn’t even know I had. Huzah.

If they don’t stop soon and allow me to go to sleep I think I will go mad. I’ve already gone outside in only my pants and a t-shirt, sat on a swing and secretly filmed construction workers – who knows what I’ll do with even more sleep deprivation.

I’ve seen and read faaaar too many science-fiction stories about the folly of intelligent technology. It’s a downward spiral. One minute it’ll be helping me organise my contacts and enabling me to e-mail and twitter, the next it’ll start undermining my life and I’ll end up locked in an old rusty school locker in an alley somewhere whilst it takes my place.

Ah it can recognise my voice can it (supposedly so that I can save all of 5 seconds when I’m trying to find a contact)? Well I’m sorry but that’s only a step away from mimicking my voice. I know how it’ll go – whilst I’m in the loo the phone will call everyone I know, mimic my voice and tell everyone I hate them.

Then as I’m stumbling around wondering why no-one has contacted me for a while I’ll get a ‘text’ from a ‘friend’ inviting me to a party in a place I don’t know. Of course I’ll ask the phone for directions and bam suddenly I’ll be in a dark alley, peering into the gloom. As I stride in looking for the door number all I’ll hear is a gentle electronic buzz from my pocket then the phone will launch up into my face and it’ll all be over.

I’ll suddenly ‘re-emerge’ into society and people will comment to each other “Wow Ella’s sentence structure has really improved since we last saw her, although she doesn’t seem to blink anymore”.